


A Wanderer on the Earth

by lonelywalker



Category: Brimstone
Genre: Amnesia, Bondage, M/M, Snark, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:11:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bargain has been struck about Zeke's fate... if only he knew what it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wanderer on the Earth

In a crummy motel room somewhere in Los Angeles, Ezekiel Stone is trying to make sense of the sixth season of _Friends_ , and the Devil is taking a shower.

The television had been on when he had woken up, permeating his dreams with a variety of canned laughter and weather reports before he had finally opened his eyes, groaning both at the scorching sunlight in the room and the ache in his muscles. He feels as though he's fallen off a building, been utterly crushed against concrete, and then stitched back together by a particularly talentless surgeon. He hasn't experienced this kind of deep long-lasting pain since before his death. There's been pain of the hot, sharp variety, of course, but it's always rapidly subsided as his reanimated body has returned to its now-naturally numb state of awareness.

Zeke blinks at the television as a young brunette flips hair out of her face and makes some kind of quip about an ex-boyfriend. More canned laughter. The remote, of course, is nowhere to be found, and the pain of moving seems to be far greater an inconvenience than the necessity of listening to this for a few minutes longer.

The sound of the water continues, thudding against tiles, echoing around the tiny motel bathroom.

 _He's using up all the hot water_ , Zeke thinks absently, rolling his eyes in silence. Of course he is. The Prince of Lies could hardly refrain, even if he actually _needs_ a shower about as much as Zeke needs a tampon. He probably gets this human body dry-cleaned while his demonic form is busy in the underworld.

He'll be clogging up the drain with that long hair of his, too. There'll be strange scummy material left on the floor, fingernail clippings and pubic hair curled into the soap...

"Goddammit," Zeke growls, and forces himself to sit up. It's really more of a process than an action. Too many of his muscles are still clenched, tense and painful, and he has to cajole smaller muscles to intervene, to somehow move his body into something resembling a sitting position. Of course, all of this means moving his head, and he soon discovers that this is the worst idea imaginable.

He hasn't had a hangover in years, but _God_ if this isn't exactly like it: the room swimming before his eyes, nausea churning up his stomach. His memory of the previous night is hazy, but as far as he can recall there had been no beer involved, none of the Scotch he so desperately craves on many nights. Definitely no drugs, much as he'd like to pin this feeling down to cocaine or heroin or something else that seems fluffy and sweet and reassuring compared to the reality of what had actually happened.

Ezekiel Stone has been fucked - really, truly, royally fucked - by the Devil himself, and has lived to suffer the consequences.

(Well, in a manner of speaking.)

In his younger, slightly more alive days, Zeke had occasionally found himself in situations that bore some vague resemblance to this one. Then, of course, the hangover really had been a hangover, and the person in the shower had usually been less a malevolent supernatural being and more a dumb blonde he'd managed to rescue from a not-very-terrible fate during the course of his daily policework. Getting out from under that situation had never been pretty - sometimes he'd even had dishes thrown at him - but it had never, as far as Zeke knew, resulted in the eternal damnation of his soul.

It is, as the good Detective Kane might say, a particularly delicate scenario.

Zeke clears his throat. What does he even _call_ the guy? Surely they should be on first-name terms by now. Lucifer? Satan? He's not sure he can keep a straight face. Nick? Probably several degrees too informal. There must be something appropriate in Hebrew or Latin, but hell if he knows what it is. "Hey, leave me some water."

No answer, although Zeke'll be damned if there isn't a low chuckle somewhere amid all that running water. He tries again:

"You expect me to catch demons smelling like this?"

Really, Zeke doubts that any of the damned care much about how he smells at all, if they have the same issues with sensory deprivation, but needling the Devil about his quest is usually the only way to get any response. And, this time at least, it pays off.

"Of course not, Mr. Stone. Do feel free to join me."

Never before has an invitation to take a much-needed shower seemed like such a threat.

Zeke swings his legs over the side of the bed and plants his feet on the floor, looking down the length of his naked body now that he's in the light. It's almost a relief to find some physical evidence for the pain he's in - bruises that might almost be fingerprints scored into his ribs and hips. He can feel the pressure of them on his back, too, the weight of the Devil pressing against him, his superhuman strength crushing Zeke as they both, achingly slowly, worked their way to orgasm.

At least there's no blood that he can see. There's semen, dried and crusted on his dick and balls and belly, and what might be saliva too. He almost expects to find trails of sulfur, but he's already marked more vividly than any other man could be. Names written in the Devil's own tongue, whatever that is, tattooed on every exposed inch of skin. From what he can see, the language seems to be a mixture of symbols as complex as hieroglyphs and as simple as childish scribble. But perhaps there's not so much difference between the two.

 _The Devil's own tongue._ He can feel it now, coursing over his body, working intricate designs over his skin, the tattoos flaring up at its touch. It's a strange searing wetness he can't comprehend, like hot wax that never cools on flesh, yet never burns through to muscle and sinew and bone. Zeke stands up, and closes his eyes against the sudden dizziness, picturing as he does so that horrible, taunting mouth closing around him in a smirk, and that awful, glorious _torture_ of arousal...

When he opens his eyes, he's half hard again, but no less dizzy.

"What did you do to me?" he demands of the empty room, making his stumbling way towards the bathroom. At least the Devil can't see him crash into the wall by the door. The impact may jar his shoulder, but it seems to clear his head a little, too, so that he's at least seeing only one of everything by the time he pulls the door open.

Steam that smells more like lavender than brimstone fills the air, fogging up the tiles, the tiny motel-room window, and the cracked mirror that hangs on one wall. Zeke breathes in and feels his entire body warming up, suddenly coated in moisture. And then a block of greenish soap skids out of the shower, crashing into his toe.

"Be a darling and pick it up, would you?"

Zeke sighs, loudly enough to be heard, and snatches it up from the ground as if he expects to be assaulted from behind at any moment. "How long have you been in here?" To his battered consciousness, it seems like hours.

"Long enough. They say blood is the hardest thing to wash off. I disagree. Sin is _much_ more difficult."

Zeke hesitates for the space of a breath before pushing back the curtain, suddenly afraid of what he might find there. But what he does see is no demon, no bright angelic form blinding him with its beauty, but a man, at least in appearance: tall and tightly muscled, his long hair soaked and darkened by the water. And this is the most difficult realization to swallow, the idea that he had let a _man_ touch him, not some asexual, otherworldly being.

The Devil, his face tilted upwards towards the shower head, raises an arm and blindly beckons him in. Zeke, driven by something that certainly isn't good sense, steps into the shower, half-expecting the pooled water at their feet to be either freezing cold or boiling hot. But it's warm. Comfortable. Perfect.

Zeke wonders if the Devil might possibly be trying to _impress_ him, and the knot of uncertainty in his stomach pulls tighter. Just as they'd worked themselves into some kind of routine, some kind of business relationship Zeke could live with and even, on occasion, enjoy, _this_ had happened. He'd been doing just fine working methodically through hell's escaped prisoners, doing the detective work, occasionally taking some time off to enjoy life on Earth again, and dealing with the Devil's constant prodding and poking. But last night...

Last night there had been sweat and heat and _sex_ , the kind of sex that stinks up an entire room, that ricochets off the walls.

Zeke holds out the soap. "I think you dropped this."

The Devil turns to him in one fluid motion, and his eyes snap open, looking first at Zeke's stiffening cock, then his face. "My my." Strong, bony fingers lock into the bruises on his hips, drag him closer as Zeke skids on the slippery floor beneath them. "I've had quite an _effect_ on you, haven't I?"

Zeke pulls free, at least by a few inches. "What have you done to me?" It's not that he doesn't like men, it's that he just doesn't think of men like that, never wastes a thought on the attractions of masculinity. He's certainly never looked at the Devil's human form, all wiry limbs and angular features, and _wanted_ him. He hasn't wanted anyone since his resurrection, his cock just as dull and lifeless as the rest of him.

But _now_... He's naked in the shower with another man, his erection stiff enough to be obvious, and he wants... something. Some echo of the previous night his mind can't quite grasp, but his body remembers. His body wants it.

The Devil's face is streaming with water. "Ezekiel," he says, a note of disappointment in his voice, and grips Zeke's cock with his left hand, tight enough to almost be painful for the moment before he starts to stroke, his fingers soapy and wet, and Zeke's objections fade away.

"Unh," he says faintly, his eyes closing, his body filling with warmth. It's as if he never realizes just how cold he is, just how numb, until another one of the damned touches him. Before, those touches had all been acts of violence, but he'd appreciated them just the same, accepting them as reminders that he still exists as more than the Devil's blunt instrument. Even knowing that it can't last, that the Devil must have some kind of ulterior motive meant to hurt and embarrass him, he can't help enjoying this unexpected act of tenderness.

There's an itch in the back of his mind about his mission to restore 113 souls to hell, about Rosalyn, about the fact that this is _the Devil_ , for God's sake, but Zeke just wants to breathe in warm air, droplets of water running down his cheeks like sweat as he feels his climax build. There's a strong arm around him after a moment, and then he feels completely detached from his body, from the need to stand or breathe at all. The delicious intensity of the pressure in his body just increases as blood hums in his ears, and he reaches for the pleasure he can feel pooling, ready to be released.

"Ezekiel," the Devil says, loud and impossibly clear.

Zeke's eyes snap open as he spills out come over the Devil's hand, and the Devil's mouth presses against his in a kiss that's all teeth and jagged edges. And Zeke _remembers_.

He remembers seeing the blood, feeling it on his cheeks, spattered against his forehead, thick and such a deep red it was almost black. He remembers touching a shocked hand to his face, seeing the gory mess coating his fingers. So much of it, pouring out of him, making him relive the memory of every head-trauma patient he'd ever encountered in the line of duty. Men who had taken a shotgun blast to the face. The most horrifying sights in all of creation...

He remembers the light, seeing it streaming from him, feeling absurdly lightheaded and weak and terrified and relieved in one thought, his soul finally freed from this diabolical task.

And then the demon had hit him again, her fist like a concrete block slamming into his jaw, knocking him off his feet as she spun the dagger in her other hand and stepped forward to destroy his other eye, sending him back to hell forever.

Zeke had scrambled backwards. _Too slow_ , he had thought, resigned to that fate now, his gun dropped two blocks back, nothing he could grab, no way to shield his face but with his own body. And then...

He blinks as the Devil pulls back from the kiss and sets about wiping his hand on Zeke's tattooed belly, the semen slipping off his skin and mingling with the water at their feet. "I should be dead."

"You _are_ dead, Ezekiel. Stone dead, in fact." The Devil picks up the soap again, and examines Zeke's torso with a critical eye. "You really do need to learn some personal hygiene skills. If there's one thing I _do_ like about the late 20th century it's the advent of deodorant. You can't imagine what I had to go through in medieval Europe. I almost felt sorry for the rats."

Zeke nods. "You saved me. I remember now. You-"

"Saved you?" The Devil's lips curl into a sneer. "I think you have me confused with someone else."

"No..."

He had been _convinced_ it was all over. No weapons. No assistance - Kane in New York, Ash long revealed to have never been a friend of his at all. He had almost been resigned to it, to accepting the utter blackness when it came, oddly without pain. But, in that cool numbness he had begun to think was death itself, he had felt fingers burning hot against his chest, and breath scorching his ear.

 _Ezekiel._

Zeke reaches out curious fingers to touch the Devil's chest, and knows he's done this before, has explored warm skin with the vague suspicion that it should really be unblemished plastic or marble, has stroked his fingers through a smattering of chest hair, rubbed his thumbs over nipples that respond just as they should. But the Devil grabs his wrist now, pins it with strong fingers. "What are you doing?"

"Why am I so comfortable with you?" Zeke asks, knowing that he shouldn't be, that standing naked in the shower with the Devil is hardly the mark of normality. And yet there's no panic rising in him, no disgust. He's warm and content and post-orgasmic. He can _feel_. He just isn't feeling that way.

The Devil studies him for a moment, then reaches to turn off the water. "A bargain was made."

"A bargain? Between me and you?" Zeke wonders if he could ever possibly have been so desperate. Another chance to find the 113, to complete his quest, while giving himself to the Devil as some kind of sex slave? Surrendering his free will?

The Devil, if it's even possible, seems uncomfortable, off balance. "No."

There had been no more words in that darkness, Zeke knows. But then there had been light, and such a light. A light that had been so bright and all-consuming that he had known he was no longer looking with his own eyes. They would have been burned out by the sight. And there had been more words while he had been fixated by the beauty of it. Words he found familiar but couldn't hope to understand, could barely grasp in his mind. _The Devil's own tongue._

Zeke looks at him in wonder. "With _God_? You argued with God for me? For my life?"

"Oh, please." The Devil looks around for an escape route, and pushes back the curtain, stepping out into the bathroom. By the time Zeke follows, the Devil has grabbed the one and only towel, and has trailed wet footprints into the other room.

Zeke follows, dripping and dazed. "So, what? Not God. Your brother? An angel? I know I shouldn't be here. And I shouldn't be fucking _you_ of all people."

The Devil sighs, looking out at him from under the towel as he dries his hair. "In your defense, you're hardly the one doing the fucking."

Zeke ignores that detail, pacing the room as he puts it together as best he can from last night's memories and this morning's evidence. "You saved my life. You made a deal with someone... a higher power. And in return... you took my free will? You raped me? You made me _like_ it?"

It makes sense, in a horribly twisted way he suspects must very closely resemble the Devil's unique sense of humor. Zeke might be a good detective, but he's too rebellious for the liking of his demonic employer. He wastes time on human pursuits. He eats. He sleeps. He has absolutely no respect for the guy - hell, he'd even _shot_ him once. Surely the Devil would prefer a more willing tool for his ambitions on Earth, someone who wouldn't object to even the most heinous crimes. And doing to him what had been done to his wife? There's no better expert in torture.

But still...

The Devil seems entirely unfazed by this accusation. "Take your free will? You have quite an imagination, Mr. Stone, but that isn't one of my many powers. It doesn't need to be. Leave a man free to do whatever he chooses, and he invariably runs headlong into my loving embrace."

Zeke finds his overcoat on the floor, finds the pants and gun beneath it. Deliberately careless in his movements, he waves the gun towards where the Devil is standing, and cocks it.

The Devil, finally, starts to pay attention, dropping the towel on Zeke's rumpled bed. "Ezekiel..." He can't be killed, but he can at least be inconvenienced. And embarrassed, which is probably the most effective weapon of all.

"Tell me what happened," Zeke demands, his hand and voice now remarkably steady.

After a moment of what seems oddly like indecision, the Devil smirks. "I'll show you."

When he's been made to relive the past before, it's always been as an observer of his own actions, walking invisibly among people he had once known. He had seen himself in the third person, then, but now he's looking out of his own eyes, can feel everything - the blood sticky on his face, the horrible ache in his body from too much punishment. He's barely conscious. His head hurts so much he just wants to sleep, but he fights it with a lethargic desperation, needing to see, hear, _understand_.

There's that language again, words that penetrate his brain without the necessity of being intercepted by his ears. They make his skin burn, the remaining tattoos blazing white-hot in the darkness.

The Devil is here with him, he knows, although it's more of a vague sense than anything he can define. The pain is blinding, and he's so tired, so exhausted, that attempting to focus on anything only leaves his head spinning. No mortal man should survive an experience like this. Not even a reanimated mortal man with a supernatural resistance to pain.

The wind whips around his face, bitingly cold, and he would crawl to shelter if he could, finding anywhere to escape the light, the cold, the pain...

And then it's all gone, gone so that he has to question if it had ever been there, if anything had even occurred that was more miraculous than the everyday events on an American street. There's still blood sticky on his face, but he can breathe, now, he can see through the pain.

"Ezekiel?"

He clutches at the body next to him, at the warmth of it, and it's only then that he realizes how much he's shaking, tears mingling with the blood.

"Shhh." The Devil may be all bones and sharp angles, but he's strong and firm, and exactly what Zeke needs to hang onto, now. If he can only stay here for a minute, get his second wind, he'll be able to get to his feet and carry on. He'll be fine.

Zeke tries to say something, to reassert his masculinity, but it comes out as more of a choked cough. He'd been in something like this situation as a police recruit, smashed in the solar plexus by a young thug with knuckledusters. He'd spent five minutes on his knees, eyes watering, unable to talk, and growing redder and redder with embarrassment as his senior officer patted his back and ordered donuts.

"Mortals shouldn't see that," the Devil is saying, and there's an edge to his voice Zeke rarely hears. He sounds shaken too, even though his grip on Zeke is resolutely firm. "But you'll be fine, Zeke. You're mine. You're made of sterner stuff."

 _Mine._ Zeke chokes up fluid from somewhere, spits it out on the ground, and tries to get up. The Devil stops him. "Give it a minute. There's no rush. And, much as I like emergency rooms, I really don't have the patience to explain your terminal lack of a pulse to the paramedics."

"Lemme go," Zeke coughs and, in struggling, only manages to pull the Devil closer.

He has the vague awareness that there are other people around, now, even at this time of night. Perhaps a club has just closed, spewing out amusingly-dressed young people onto the sidewalk. And how must the two of them look, crouched on the concrete, holding onto each other desperately?

The Devil must have had the same thought, because he does finally lever Zeke up onto his feet just as he hears the slightly drunken laughter of a group passing right by them. "Here," the Devil says softly, and he has a handkerchief in one hand, mopping up the blood from Zeke's face, smoothing over the eyelid.

Zeke blinks, and sees. He lifts his free hand to his face, almost poking himself in the eye as he determines that he's not blind after all. He's whole. He's... apart from the blood, and the ache in his head, he's exactly as he had been before his encounter with the demon earlier this evening.

More kids are passing them, glancing at them, making comments as the Devil crumples up the bloody handkerchief and stuffs it into one of the many pockets of his overcoat. "You'll be fine," he says again, and it doesn't quite have the matter-of-fact tone Zeke has grown to expect. For once, the Devil isn't berating him as though he's a careless child. He's concerned. He _cares_.

And he's still hanging onto Zeke as if there's nothing else solid in all of reality.

Zeke coughs, swallows, and finally feels as though he can talk. "Are you... are _you_ all right?" he asks, touching the Devil's arm with the full expectation of being ridiculed and pushed away. But there's something in the Devil's behavior, in the look in his eyes, that reminds Zeke of trauma victims from his work as a police officer - fathers and boyfriends and older brothers absolutely _determined_ to bottle up their emotions and put on a great show of coping.

The Devil looks at him, and breathes out, and Zeke pulls him in, wrapping his arms around the Devil's warmth. He tells himself he's only doing it because he's so cold, because he's still a little shaky himself and needs someone to hold onto, but his mind is preoccupied with feeling this living body against his own. The Devil has a heartbeat, he realizes with a sudden smile, and he's not pulling away.

"Ezekiel..." A hand snakes around his waist, up under his shirt, and fingertips brush the tattoos scattered over his lower back.

Zeke's pulse is suddenly racing, the numbness fading away as his skin tingles with warmth that, for once, isn't pain. "Please..."

He means _don't stop_. He's been beaten too much tonight to withstand any more punishment. He needs to sleep, to curl up and be warm for once. He needs it, if he's going to get up the next morning and fight the good fight again. He needs...

The Devil kisses him, and maybe Zeke would prefer it if that tongue parting his lips were forked, but he can't force himself to feel any kind of revulsion. Feeling anything at all is so evocative, so arousing, that he can't back away.

"So. Does that answer your question?"

Zeke blinks, and he's back in the motel room, still wet, the water on his body growing colder by the second. The Devil, meanwhile, is lying back on Zeke's bed, stark naked, dog-earing pages of Zeke's one and only book. "Yeah," he says bluntly. "I was traumatized. People do crazy things when they've come that close to death."

"Ah." The Devil turns the page.

"And if you did save me - whoever you bargained with - I know it's only because you enjoy making my life a living nightmare." Zeke pulls up his pants from the floor.

There's a snort of derision from the bed. "Really, Ezekiel. It would be far easier to do that in _Hell_. Or I could have left you to continue your work for me here, minus an eye. I think you'd quite enjoy the loss of depth perception, not to mention the searing agony."

"Why, then?"

"The answer's written all over that rather fine body of yours. You're not just my bloodhound, Ezekiel. You're not quite as expendable as that. You're mine, and all that entails. Much as you might doubt it, I do keep an eye on my own."

Zeke dumps his pants on the edge of the bed, and examines the gun in his hand. "So this bargain... you saved my life, and I have to pay the price?"

There's no witty reply forthcoming. The Devil throws down the book, and looks at him, as if contemplating simply disappearing in a puff of smoke. "We already have a working arrangement, Ezekiel. Contrary to your expectations, I _do_ occasionally keep my word."

"And the sex? There's no way I ever agreed to that."

And yet... he still hasn't put on his pants. The morning's hangover has given way to memories of last night's warmth, the Devil's naked body pressed to his, their limbs entangled in ways that should have been suffocating, but had only brought him more pleasure than he could stand.

The Devil stretches out on the bed, yawning. "No, you didn't. Well. Not in so many words. I imagine because your mouth was otherwise engaged." He sighs, and looks at Zeke, stretching a hand out to him. "Do come here, Ezekiel. Enough with the pretense. Rosalyn will forgive you. Your heterosexual pride will be unblemished. I _am_ the Devil, after all. A little debauchery has to be expected."

Zeke touches his fingers to the Devil's with a sort of wonder in his mind, expecting a crash of thunder as they touch, expecting a shock of electricity rather than warmth. At some point, he knows, the strange feeling of comfort the Devil gives him must give way to pain. But, for now at least, he simply can't resist, lying down on damp sheets.

"They do things differently up there," the Devil is saying in a whisper, drawing Zeke to him, sharp nails lightly raking his back. "You keep suspecting that they want something bad in return for your life, in return for your _third_ chance at life on earth. But they're far more..." He sighs as Zeke kisses his chest. "Devious."

"Then what?" Zeke almost doesn't care anymore, the warmth of skin against skin overtaking him, a fierce need surging through his veins once again. He feels _alive_ and that, for now at least, is all that matters.

The Devil strokes his hair affectionately, almost as if he's taking care of a pet. "They know how much you mean to me, Zeke. They know exactly how much I'd give..."

Zeke hasn't had much contact with the other side of the afterlife, but the one angel he had come across had hardly seemed vindictive. He had been an _angel_ after all.

He looks up. "What did they do to you? They hurt you, didn't they?" He remembers the Devil, this all-powerful being, shaking in his arms last night.

The Devil bites his lip. "In a manner of speaking. Now shhh, Ezekiel. You need to relax. And I know just how to help you."

Zeke is hardly in a position to argue. The pain of last night is still a very real physical memory, and he's beginning to realize just how little sleep he must have managed to get before the Devil's shenanigans with the television had woken him up. No matter how often the Devil assures him that he really doesn't need sleep, food, drink, or toothpaste, he can't quite seem to get out of the habit.

"There aren't so many left," the Devil is saying, having rolled Zeke over onto his back, and begun to examine the tattoos on his chest with lips and teeth and tongue.

It looks like more than enough to Zeke. " _One_ almost killed me last night."

"But you won't let that happen again." A nipple is pinched between incisors. "Eighty... ninety to go? Let's say six months if you're _particularly_ lazy with your detective work. And then..."

Zeke is trying very hard not to spend every moment groaning with pleasure. "And then I get my life back."

"Your life... which would entail what, exactly?"

Throughout his time in hell, Zeke has always clung to a crystal-clear picture of his life in an attempt to keep himself sane: his loving wife, his fulfilling career, the promise of kids and more money and a better house in the suburbs in the future. But in the months he's spent walking the streets, all of these ideas have been exposed as pipe dreams. Rosalyn, like the rest of the world, has moved on. And, even if Kane could somehow pull some strings for him with the NYPD, policing drug dealers seems oddly pointless when he's fought with demons and won.

He looks down at where the Devil is contemplating a particularly intricate tattoo by his groin. "Maybe we could work something out."

" _Ah_. I do like the sound of this. I'm very good with contracts."

His smile, impish as ever, is almost infectious. Zeke reaches down and fiddles with that ridiculous haircut of his. "What did you give up for me?" he asks quietly, hoping that his grip on the Devil's hair will stop him from simply disappearing. But, then, he hasn't vanished since last night...

Just as Zeke is about to voice his suspicions, the Devil slides up his body so that their faces are level. "Oh, I'm just as damned as I ever was, Ezekiel. It's more a case of gaining something. Along the lines of a nasty cold you can never shake. I'm sure you know the feeling."

Zeke pushes the hair back from his face, seeing sincerity in dark eyes just as the Devil kisses him again. "It's their favorite illness of all, you know," he says in Zeke's ear. "The only sexually-transmitted disease I've never enjoyed. It's painful and wrenching and greater than any torture even _I_ visit on anyone."

Zeke grins, finally understanding, and kisses the side of his head, strands of wet hair sticking to his lips. "I love you too."

The Devil slumps in his arms, cheek pressed to Zeke's breastbone just above his heart. "Thank God."


End file.
